Entries Tagged as 'Photo Book Uses'

Include Photo Books as Part of the Studio Package

Clients come to professional photographers because you have the talent, knowledge and equipment they don’t. Anyone can buy a digital point-and-shoot camera for $100 and have their images printed out at CVS, or even just directly upload them to their home computer. But professional photographers are going to create something much more beautiful and memorable than your average snapshot. Professional photographers get brought in for the special occasions where a snapshot by your mom just won’t do.

Why not make the wedding/birthday/anniversary party that much more memorable with a professionally printed photo book? Clients may have dozens of photos that they love, but don’t necessarily want 8x10s of every single one. Some may not be able to afford the printing and framing of every image they want to keep. A photo book is great place to display all their favorite images side-by-side, or maybe even collage style. Now your client gets to remember every moment and your studio can offer a unique package add-on.

A professionally printed photo book is a great addition to your session packages. They are much more memorable (and less easy to lose or break!) than a disc with all the images. They are also an easy way to set yourself apart from other photographers. Companies that print professional looking photo books offer photographers a low-work, high-yield service that can encourage your business! If you could offer a personalized photo book, in addition to your other services and skills as a photographer, what bride wouldn’t be thrilled to see photos from the rehearsal dinner, ceremony and reception laid out in a completely customized coffee table-like book? Your services just became that much more valuable to your clients.

Professionally printed photo books let you add designs, text and edit the layout of all the photos, so that each one can be tailored to fit the needs and expectations of your clients. The quality of paper, inks and printing machines used by professional printing companies guarantees the highest quality product.

Teaching with Photo Books

No one can argue that the best way to learn photography is to grab a camera and shoot as much as possible. But without some frame of reference, learning the ins and outs of the technical side of photography can be extremely difficult to master. The difference between an amateur and professional photographer is established in the technical mastery.

A professionally printed photo book is a great way for a professional photographer to create their own how-to guide for assistants to learn from and reference.

It’s hard to explain what you see through a lens, even harder to understand what someone else is seeing. While digital cameras have made it so we can see the shot instantly after taking it, there is no substitution for seeing it printed, where even small differences produce strong results.

When training someone, having visual samples on hand is the easiest way to get the point across. A photo book created as your hands-on training guide lets you do just that. You’ll find that it’s easier to:

• Show the difference between ISO settings
• Demonstrate how different flash position can change the lighting the same shot
• Show the numerous outcomes when combining various F-stops and shutter speeds

Photo guide books provide a strong base for young photographers to lean on. If the circumstances of the shot are A, B and C, then they must do X to get the best result. Photography may not be that formulaic, but for someone just starting out it helps to have an idea of where to begin when composing the frame. Over time, they may start recognizing similar lighting situations, for example, and remember how to cope with them without the need to reference your guide.

A professionally printed photo book lets you add text to your images, so the information is always readily available even when you might not be. You can fit multiple images on a single page, making it easier for side-by-side comparison. And because it is your photo guide, you decide what tips and tricks your assistant needs to learn to become a successful professional photographer.

Printed Photo Books as Gallery Companions

Once you’ve managed to secure a show in a gallery, a much coveted position by photographers everywhere, you might find you have more options than you have space. Depending on the size of the gallery and duration of your show, you might have to trim back on your already carefully crafted showcase. A professionally printed photo book can help enhance the show when you come across a situation like this. Photo books allow you to showoff you talents and vision as a photographer, even if you are limited by the gallery.

Let’s suppose you wanted to show your Cape Cod landscape series, which consists of a carefully edited and selected 34 pictures—it started with several hundred images, so this is already a much trimmed selection—but the gallery, regardless of its reason, is only offering you 17 spots do to so. Suddenly, you have to go through the entire show with a fine tooth comb, cutting out an additional 50% of your images. This can be a frustrating effort and might hinder the success of your show, should you not be able to reconstruct your finest gallery presentation.

Why not create a professionally printed photo book to serve as a companion guide to your gallery show? Not only will the images displayed in the gallery make it in, but so will the images that you had to cut out. This way the story you had originally intended to tell can be seen in its unabridged version. You can even add text to the images, describing both the technical and artistic aspects of each shot. You can include a forward about the show and contact information, further promoting your work. A photo book adds a voice to your gallery show, speaking on your behalf.

If the gallery permits it, you might also be allowed to promote the sale of your photo book in addition to the prints being displayed.
Should your exhibit be sharing gallery space with another photographer’s work, a professionally printed photo book might be that extra special piece that gets the attention of the public, earning you more recognition and, perhaps, future clients.

Personal Photos Deserve to be Printed!

As a professional photographer, your commercial career is based on capturing the happy moments of other people. Weddings, birthday parties, family portraits and the like serve as the bread and butter of your career. But rarely, if ever, is it your wedding, your birthday or your family being showcased. Professionally printed photo books are the perfect place to celebrate your most important client…you!


Chances are you spend the majority of every day viewing life through a lens— sometimes metaphorically and sometimes physically—because photography is your passion. You take a photographic perspective towards everything you look at; that face your dog makes when barking at the back door, the way your son built his Lego castles, how your mother’s hands look while kneading bread. Every instant is carefully composed and snapped off, either in your mind or with a finger. All these little moments in your life deserve to be recognized and celebrated. A photo book is a step up from the traditional family photo album and is something your neighbors will be happy to let you show them! Since photo books are so customizable you’ll never again be forced to put your anniversary photos in a boring frame.

Too often our personal photos spend their lives on a memory card, only to be forgotten, erased or lost over time. The favorite shots that make it to the rotating, electronic photo frame aren’t much better off. Our personal photos deserve a place of honor in our homes. They are, after all, the best record of our lives. Professionally printed photo books are an elegant way to showcase your talent and celebrate your home and family at the same time. They are of such high quality that you won’t want to store them on the bottom of your office bookshelf.

You spend hours working on the memories and special moments of other people. You’d do everything in your power as a photographer to get the perfect shot for a client, why not save a little time for yourself and show what you can do when the subject is something you really care about. It’s your life and it’s time to show it off.

A Printed Photo Book as Your Portfolio

As a photographer, one of the most important promotional tools you have is your portfolio. Whether you’re looking to book a commercial job, like a wedding or ad campaign, or have your work displayed in a gallery, your portfolio is the best way to showcase your talent and vision as a photographer. To capture a potential client’s attention, your portfolio needs to be dynamic, impressive and memorable. Printed photo books are a great way to easily, yet professionally, present your best work.

Some of the reasons why printed photo books can work as your portfolio include:

Professionally printed photo books are portable and durable, so there is no fear of easily damaging a favorite print. You can always carry one with you for on-the-spot demonstrations, should the opportunity to pitch a prospective client present itself. The stitched biding of professionally printed books, versus the typically glued binding of printed books designed for consumer use, guarantees that the pages will not fall out with heavy use.

They are easy for a client to look through, getting a good overview of your work. You also get strict control of the content they see and in what order. How your work is presented is just as important as the work itself. With a printed photo book are in control of the story your photos will tell.

They are completely customizable, allowing you to categorize your work so it is more appropriate for the clients you are trying to reach. You can include a forward, add text to your photos, design borders and change the number, size and layout of photos per page. This is all about you, so why not add some of your personality to your portfolio.

Professionally printed photo books also say a lot about your work ethic and dedication as photographer. If you take the time and effort to create something like this for yourself, imagine what you can do for a client! It shows pride and enthusiasm for your work, and a willingness to go the extra step to create something truly spectacular.

Creating Your Reputation As A Photographer

When you’re trying to establish your reputation as a photographer, you need to be able to show off what you’re capable of doing and professional photo books might be just the tool that you need to show your best work and get your name out there.

This is true whether you’ve moved into a new area and are looking to set up shop. It’s also true if you’ve been living in an area for an extended period of time and are trying to break into the professional marketplace. Printed photo books allow you to show off your best work, organize your work by theme and self publish a book that can be sold in local bookstores. Artsy coffee table books are something that are sought after by many, especially if they are by local artists.

However, a printed photo book is more than just a way of selling your work while building your reputation it’s also a tool that you can use to set your portfolio apart from others that gallery owners and others see each and every day.

Your reputation is key to your success. You need to be memorable and your work needs to be recognizable. Why not show it off in a way that other photographers have not yet embraced?

Importance of Photo Book Structure

When designing a photo book, the structure of it is as important as the quality of photos that it houses. You might ask yourself why? Why does the structure play such an important role?
Photo Book structure is important for a number of reasons:

The structure of your photo book shows the quality of the product itself

a photo book with a hard cover and library binding is going to be of a better quality than a softcover book with pages glued into the spine with low quality glues.

Structure impacts design
Having good structure will allow you to focus on design elements and working around flaws. When it’s possible to predict exactly how the book will be created, it’s easy to know how to work around the bleeds and margins of the page because they will be consistent every time.

Quality work should be presented in a quality way
You take pride in your photography, it should be presented in a quality, well structured photo book.

Regardless of what your photo book is being used for whether for marketing purposes, presentation to a client, or perhaps just for storing and showcasing your beautiful photography, ensuring that your works of art are stored in quality structured photo books will make a huge difference in the end.

Photo Books and Portrait Photography

As an established portrait photographer there are things that you do differently from your competitors. Maybe you’ve found an angle of posing that’s flattering to every body size. Maybe it’s something that you do with the lighting. Maybe it’s about backgrounds or natural settings.

Regardless, as a portrait photographer, you are certainly not the only one in your niche, how do you differentiate yourself consistently from your competitors and keep yourself on top?

With a professional photo book, you’ll be able to capture the essence of what makes your business different from others.

You will have the opportunity to include multiple shots from the same shoot to show your clients the options that are available to them in terms of posing. You might choose to work with a single model against a number of different backgrounds to share with other clients a sense of what drops or lighting arrangements they have to choose from. Or you could use the photo books to display different print sizes.

Portrait photographers will find that photo books give them a chance to catalog their work and present “the big picture” of what they can do for their clients. It is a unique feature that can draw your talent away from the crowd and turn you into the sought after photographer that everyone is looking to hire.

Preserving Events with Professional Photo Books

When you are an event photographer, one of the things that you’re going to want to be sure of is that you are doing all that you can to tell the story of what you were a part of.

With printed photo books, what you will find is that you are putting yourself in a position in which you’re able to do more to let those who were at the event remember what different moments were like – that’s going to enable you to know that you’re doing your job.

Simply put, being an event photographer means making sure that the memories of the event stay fresh for your clients. Whether you have been working with printed photo books for a long while or it’s something that is relatively new to you, what you are going to find is that you’re able to showcase a moment in a creative captivating way.

Ultimately, you’re going to find that you are in a position in which printed photo books let you remind your clients of why the event was important to them. Not just that, but the printed photo books will remind your clients about your services the next time that they need a photographer.

Teaching Photography With Printed Photo Books

When part of your work as a professional photographer includes teaching others the art and helping them to develop an eye for capturing the best shots, it’s important to look at what you can do to set your classes apart from those led by others. One option is to offer your students something more to remember the course by – something like a printed photo book.

With printed photo books as a teacher, you’ll find that there are a number of things that you will be able to do:


Bring everyone’s work together
– creating a collection of final works for students to takeaway with them.

Include Class Information – including details that will help students remember what they have learned in a creative catchy way.

Incorporate yours/their thoughts – You’ll be able to include thoughts that the students had and to explain the ways in which some of the photos exemplify lessons that were taught.

After you have been using printed photo books, whether they are exclusively for your clients or for your students after a course there will be a variety of additional ways to use them. The photo book can be quite the creative tool used in teaching your photography students, they too will appreciate having a keepsake that can be referenced from time to time.